by M. J. Rose
I finished all the engravings. I knew I should stop, but something propelled me to keep going. I was eager to see how this talisman would turn out. I knew of this soldier. I had read his work. I felt a kinship to him, and I’d never experienced that before.
The next step was to add the personal memento. One by one, I placed four segments of the rock crystal egg into a vise to hold them steady. Removing Jean Luc’s dark brown lock of hair, I smoothed it out, separated the strands, then laid them down in the core. Then I added the rest of the segments one by one until I’d rebuilt the whole egg again.
Those last steps often took more than one attempt. I wanted the hair or other personal items to become part of the design—in this case, to lie symmetrically, forming a core, not just looking like hair encased in crystal. If the strands separated in the building process, I’d need to start all over. But that night everything turned out perfectly on the first try.
Taking a length of gold thread, I began to wrap the egg. Sometimes I left more crystal showing, other times less. With Jean Luc’s egg, I left more because the look of his hair against the rivers of peridot was so pleasing I wanted it to be visible.
Once all the threads encircled the orb like curving, twisting vines, tight and determined, sealing the treasure within, I picked up my soldering gun and went to work attaching the gold at several junctures, creating a tight meld. I loved how the hot metal fused the disparate threads, like lovers separated for too long finally coming together and not wanting to let go.
Finished, I cupped the orb and inspected it. As I’d expected, quiet prevailed. Although I could hear cries in the catacombs, without a living conduit, I’d never received specific communications from my charms. In order for me to hear the actual words the talisman carried, a mother, wife, lover, or daughter needed to put the locket around her neck. It was simply a piece of jewelry to me. An artifact until its owner’s love made it come alive and I heard the message it was meant to pass on.
But something quite different occurred that night. As I sat cradling Jean Luc’s crystal egg in my palm, I experienced a fluttering in my chest. A tremor of exertion. As if I were a cage and some creature with wings were making a herculean effort to break free.
My body began to shake, and one of my terrible headaches blossomed. I smelled apples, which didn’t surprise me, and something else that did . . . graphite and wood . . . I smelled the scent of paper.
Then, as if it were blowing in on a great wind from a distant place, I heard a grumbling noise. Dozens of distant voices? Birds screaming? I couldn’t be sure. Listening harder, I tried but failed to pull any one sound out of the mélange. Yet I sensed a force trying to impart information.
Impossible. I needed some headache powder and water. Or wine. The soldiers’ talismans had never before spoken to me alone. I had to be imagining these sounds in anticipation of the terrible words I would hear when I gave Madame Alouette the talisman and she put her own hands around it. Often the soldier’s last thoughts frightened or shocked me and left me disturbed for days. I told myself I must have been dreading that.
I mixed the headache powder in a tall glass of water and drank it. My equilibrium restored, I returned to my worktable and stared down at the crystal. All was quiet in the workshop and in my mind. But as soon as I picked up the talisman, the noises started again. I heard that same howling wind. Distant shouts. Or maybe a rush of water against rocks. None of it made any sense. All of it was deeply disturbing.
My fingers began to shake so badly I had to put the talisman down and clasp my hands together. Cold washed over me. And the wind that I’d only been hearing before seemed to actually be blowing past me.
What was happening? Had I been working too many nights? Hearing too many stories about dead soldiers? Or was I spending too many hours studying stones? My great-grandmother had warned me of this. Madness had descended upon some of the descendants of La Lune when they welcomed and embraced the talents she passed down.
The remedy I’d taken wasn’t helping. With my head pounding I wasn’t thinking clearly. The echoes and hums and crashes kept building. I’d never been in a hurricane, but I’d read about them. This must be what a storm of that magnitude sounded like. Wind that tore through trees and flowers. Upending objects, sending them flying. Destroying property, doing terrible damage.
Where . . .
One word flew out of the cacophony. I’d heard a word. But I was alone. Unless Monsieur had returned and was just outside?
“Hello?” I shouted out into the dark workshop.
No answer.
The storm continued to rage on inside my head. There must be an explanation for the word. Could it have been one of the Russians from Orloff’s meeting, lost on his way out? That had happened before. Was some anomaly making a word spoken in the outer hallway reverberate strangely?
“Is someone there?” I called out.
No answer. I needed to clean up and leave. Sleep would help. I would just put away my tools and then I could—
Where am I?
I heard it more clearly. A deep and dark raspy voice asking me for help.
“Hello?” I shouted. “Is anyone there?”
Where am I?
I heard pain accenting the distant words. Was he standing outside the store? Or was his voice traveling up from the underground chambers? Could he be hurt? Or was it a ploy? It might be one of the Russians, but just as likely a German spy pretending to be a lost Frenchman. Or it might be a thief, making sure the shop was empty before he stole from us.
From the table, I grabbed one of the long metal files with a point sharp enough to be a weapon. Creeping out of the workshop into the darkened hallway, ready to pounce or help depending on what I saw, I peered into the shadows, searching for a figure. But the hallway was empty. I checked the door to the staircase down to the basement below, but it was shut tight. The showroom was empty too.
Skulking down the hall and over to the entrance, I kept my back to the wall so no one hiding could attack me from behind.
The locked front door exhibited no evidence of an attempt to pry it open. Neither of the large windows on either side was broken.
Where am I?
Like the sound inside of a shell, the voice reverberated. I turned. My eyes, now totally adjusted to the dark, searched every corner. This had to be some strange echo coming up from a shaft in the mines I’d never been aware of before.
Where am I?
“I don’t know, I don’t see you,” I whispered into the darkness.
Where am I?
Listening harder, I realized the shadowy blue-green voice echoed inside of me. The sad and desperate words weren’t coming from outside. I was manufacturing them. Overtired, my imagination was playing tricks on me. I needed to leave, to go to bed, to sleep.
Please, tell me.
I put my hands up to my ears and pressed as firmly as I could to block out the voice, the wind, the words.
“No,” I heard my voice groan. “No.”
Please.
“Go away.”
Please, tell me where I am.
This time I screamed: “Go away. Go away. Go away.” I needed to shut down the voice. To prove to myself I wasn’t losing my mind the way so many women in my family who had succumbed to the darkness and been its victim had lost theirs.
I knew all their names and the dates they were born and died—all tragically. Some accidentally, some by their own hand. Only one living past thirty-three.
EUGENIE 1664–1694
MARGUERITE 1705–1728
SIMONE 1734–1777
CAMILLE 1782–1814
CLOTHILDE 1800–1832
My great-grandmother had escaped by not believing in the legend. My mother by embracing it and willingly inviting a fate that the others had thought was worse than death. But I wasn’t my mother.
I’d
succeeded in quieting the voice. The wind slowed and softened to a breeze. The workshop was silent once again, save for the sound of my own heart beating, still a bit too fast. My back dripped with sweat. My hands continued to tremble. But the worst of it was over. I knew if I just rested for a few more minutes, I’d be all right again. And then I’d go downstairs and go to bed and in the morning this would all be a—
Where am I?
I shook my head. “No, no . . . go away.”
I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t move. My feet seemed cemented to the floor.
Please . . . Just tell me. Where am I?
I gave up. What else could I do? Maybe if I answered, he’d leave.
“I don’t know where you are. On the battlefield where you died? In our shop? What can you see of where you are?” I whispered.
What would be worse? For him to answer or not to? I didn’t know anymore.
When I received no response, I deluded myself that the episode was over. The breeze was even softer than before, wasn’t it? In fact, I wasn’t sure I could even feel it anymore. Yes, the episode was over. I willed my hands to stop trembling. I didn’t need to put away my tools. I just needed to leave and go to bed.
You. I can see you.
Alarmed anew, I spun around. The workshop was empty. There was no doubt of it. There was no living being here with me. My head ached worse now. The powder hadn’t helped. Yes, yes. That must be it. At last I’d figured it out. The entire episode was a manifestation of my headache. An exaggeration of my ability to hear the stones and an overactive imagination.
Yes, I seemed to receive messages for mourners. I tried to convince myself the communiqués were the product of my mind reading the mind of the woman who sat across the table from me, desperately wanting to hear the words I shared with her. I had almost talked myself into believing I was a mentalist, not a necromancer. That I spoke the words I sensed the woman needed to hear. Not that I really was picking up messages the dead soldiers left in the atmosphere for their families so they could move on.
And it was possible, wasn’t it? Accounts of mentalists who were able to receive others’ thoughts went back to the Old Testament and ancient Greeks. In 1882, Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, invented the word “telepathy.” But I preferred “mental radio” to explain the phenomena I experienced—the theory being that, in the same way the newly invented radios in the news transmitted sound, our brains transmitted thoughts to one another.
Over and over, I told myself that’s what I heard, what the noises were. Transmissions from people around me, in the same room, the next room, the street. That what I saw and experienced was no different from my father’s ability to imagine a building, from Edith Wharton’s ability to imagine a story, from Picasso’s ability to imagine a painting.
But that night, speaking to a voice in the ether, I couldn’t fool myself. I was the daughter of a woman who called herself a witch and who could spin spells to prevent aging, cure illness, or alter the thoughts in someone’s mind.
What was my curse? Or my gift, as Anna insisted I refer to it. Yes, I spoke the language of gems and minerals. But I didn’t just hear their energy and sense who had touched them last or what they’d been feeling. I received audible messages through the stones as well. Or, more accurately, I was able to sense the energy between stones and humans and sometimes receive messages from the dead. Yes, I’d heard the dead’s cries in cemeteries, in the catacombs. And through the lockets I’d heard messages meant for their loved ones. But I’d never spoken to the dead before. I’d never known I was capable of doing that.
I remained sitting at my workbench, staring down at Madame Alouette’s charm. A simple rock crystal egg in eight sections with a soldier’s hair—her son’s hair—sandwiched at its center.
I still felt ill, but I knew I couldn’t stay in the workshop all night. Forcing myself to clean up, I swept the gold dust and scraps into the leather apron strung under my table. Nothing is wasted in a jeweler’s workshop. A year’s worth of scraps of the precious metal is worth a small fortune.
After putting away my tools, I picked up the crystal egg once more, this time intending to put it too away.
Surprised by its warmth, I closed my palm around it. An exotic and pungent scent tickled my senses. Lime and verbena with a hint of myrrh. I heard the wind again but warmer and calmer this time. And with it came a tangle of voices. I listened harder and heard, inside of them, a single voice. His voice whispering softly. I leaned forward, thinking the voice emanated from the egg. But I was wrong. He was all around me.
I’m not on the field.
“No?”
I was on the field. The last place I remember. I made a call. The wrong call. What happened next was all my fault.
“What happened?”
My unit . . . all my men . . . all gone.
Did the voice belong to Madame Alouette’s son? It had to. I’d been working on his talisman all night. And she’d told me he’d been in charge of his unit. Was it really him? And why was I scared to address him? Because he wasn’t alive anymore? Because I was talking to—what? A spirit? A ghost? A fragment of a trapped soul needing to communicate before he moved on?
I’d heard other soldiers’ voices before. But they were final thoughts left behind. A last sentence or two, preserved. Like an insect frozen in amber forever. Those soldiers weren’t speaking to me. Not to Opaline Duplessi. But this one was.
It was never my mother’s magick but rather my father’s love that kept me feeling safe when I was a child. When she opened the door, her darkness and her secretive powers would overwhelm me, while my father’s words and his touch would soothe me.
But that night I was alone in Paris. My father wasn’t with me. He couldn’t comfort me and convince me I had nothing to fear. And I was afraid. Somehow I’d opened a door of my own, and now I would have to live with what was on the other side.
Chapter 5
The next evening, once the shop closed, I followed my typical Saturday routine. I changed from my work clothes—a simple black midlength skirt and white blouse—into an mandarin orange sleeveless chemise, matching satin-heeled shoes, and opal earrings and necklace I’d designed. Ten minutes later I crossed the Pont du Carrousel to my great-grandmother’s house. I would sleep there overnight, and we’d spend Sunday together before I went back to the store Monday morning. The normalcy of our time together would make me feel better, I was sure of it. Grand-mère discouraged exploration into the spiritual realm. My inner turmoil would calm, as it always did around her.
The sun hadn’t yet set and an almost festive feeling blew in the breeze. Bertha hadn’t dropped any bombs in two weeks, and a false sense of security was making all of Paris nearly giddy. As I strolled, I thought about how alone I was. I could have brought Grigori with me; he was always willing to accompany me to my great-grandmother’s. But I’d endured enough of his melancholy the night before.
My destination was located on a lane blocked off from rue des Saints-Pères by wide wooden double doors. One of a half dozen four-story mid-eighteenth-century stone houses, it shared a courtyard that backed up to rue du Dragon. Hidden clusters like this were a common configuration in Paris, affording privacy within the bustling city. Usually the porte cochère was locked and one rang for the concierge, but on busy nights the heavy doors remained ajar and I didn’t need to wait for service.
I stood on the stoop and lifted the hand-shaped bronze door knocker and then let it drop. All the noise emanating from inside muffled the sound. Dismayed but not surprised, I found Maison de la Lune more crowded than usual. In the salon, my great-grandmother entertained her visiting crop of soldiers with food and drink, music and conversation.
“I don’t know how to turn any of them away,” she confided as she offered her cheek for me to kiss. “I hope you won’t be too cross with me, Opaline, but I put
two of them up in your bedroom and made up the daybed in my suite for you.”
Of course I was, even if I didn’t show it. But I was never completely comfortable in this house anyway. It hardly mattered where I slept. The ancient maison was too old and there were too many secrets and too much history here. I always felt as if I’d just missed learning something about myself and my family that I needed to know. And the overflow of strangers—most of whom drank too much and enjoyed sex too loudly and took what I thought was advantage of my great-grandmother’s largesse—made it feel even less like a home.
“You are cross with me. I see it in your face. Just like your mother, your anger pinches your eyes and, like me, flashes there.”
We were in the grand salon. The most opulent room, where my great-grandmother held court. The colors of the fabric wall coverings and carpets chosen to complement her coloring—dark red hair, peach skin, topaz eyes with fire opal highlights. The museum-quality furniture was ornate. The walls were crowded with paintings and the tabletops laden with treasures—all holding special significance for her.
I worried the visiting soldiers might be tempted to lift some of the objets d’art. It would be so easy. In between the windows stood an almost full-size marble sculpture of Diana wearing her crescent-moon headpiece. The double string of gray pearls that hung around her neck was worth a fortune. My great-grandmother’s favorite lover had put them there more than forty years before, and Grand-mère said she left them because they reminded her of him.
With just one gesture they could be off her neck and in someone’s pocket. And the pearls weren’t the only valuables to make off with. Enticing, curious oddities and fanciful amusements gleamed and shone from every corner.
A priceless collection of Japanese netsukes of men and women in erotic poses graced one table. Silver repoussé vases studded with onyx, turquoise, and amethyst and decorated with iridescent peacock feathers were tucked in corners. On the mantel were a half dozen birds’ nests made from spun silver, each holding eggs carved out of precious stones. On the top of the grand Bösendorfer piano sat a collection of tiny enamel- and jewel-framed miniatures of women’s eyes and breasts painted on ivory.
